Accident Prone?
While I don’t consider myself accident prone, I have been involved in a number of somewhat freakish accidents 
during many years of traveling. Although I’m not a hardcore adventure traveler, I am definitely not your “conventional couch potato recreational traveler” either. I like to run, swim and participate in nature hikes and sometimes I go off the beaten track. All told during my 30 years in traveling around the world, I have been involved in four mishaps that necessitated a visit to the doctor or to a local medical clinic.
In my last post, I told the story of my Crash course in riding a motorbike in Thailand. From what I gather, there are quite a few tourists in Thailand who have been involved in a motorbike accident, either as the driver or as the passenger. Fortunately most of these accident victims were able to escape serious injury but I have I have heard of instances where somebody was seriously hurt - breaking a leg or two, suffering internal injuries or a concussion. By all means, if you’re on a motorcycle, you definitely take your life into your own hands if you don’t wear a safety helmet. My educated guess is that the #1 tourist related accident in Thailand involves riding a motorcycle.
My first mishap took place in the late 1980s in Montego Bay, Jamaica. While swimming at the famous Dr. Cave’s Beach, I inadvertently rubbed up against some fire coral. Minutes later, It felt as if my whole left side and my abdomen were on fire. I was in excruciating pain; with nerves of steel I managed to swim back to the shore, whereupon a friend of mine took me to the local clinic. After waiting in the lobby for what seemed like an eternity, a doctor finally examined me and prescribed some painkillers. The pain and discomfort miraculously abated by early evening.
My next accident took place in Barva Volcano National Park in Costa Rica in 1990 - While hiking up a muddy trail to the mirador (lookout point), I lost my balance and upon falling, struck my head just above my left eye socket on a protruding branch. The fall opened up a large gash and blood starting pouring out; if I had not been wearing glasses, I could have lost my left eye as the glasses diverted the blow. Hiking back to the ranger station at the entrance, I washed the wound with soap and water and I was given some linen cloth to wrap around my head and the wound. With the bleeding more or less stopped, I proceeded to walk back to the highway and tried to flag a ride back to my hotel, a good 10 miles away, As it was dark already and there was very little traffic, I was not very successful in getting a ride, so I gutted it out and walked in the darkness. Finally about 2 miles away from the hotel, some local picked me up and drove me the rest of the way. The next day, after flying to the popular beach resort of Tamarindo on the Pacific Coast, I went to a local clinic and received medical attention - they washed out the wound thoroughly, gave me some oral antibiotics and a tetanus shot.
While at Playa Grande Beach in 1999 near the 
resort town of Tamarindo on Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast, I was running on the beach late in the afternoon towards sunset and soon thereafter it got quite dark. After I finished my exercise, I tried to navigate back to my hotel. As it was pitch dark and there was very little lighting, I admittedly lost my bearings and I had to guess where the entrance to the hotel was. Apparently my guess was wrong, as I stumbled into a barb wired fence and slashed open my left shin. Ouch. It seems that I missed the entrance of the hotel by a good 50 yards or so. After getting the wound cleaned up by a member of the hotel staff, later that night I hobbled around on a turtle watching expedition. Next day, I went to a medical clinic, where they cleaned out the wound for possible infection, gave me some oral antibiotics and a tetanus shot.
Call me crazy, but reminiscing about these little mishaps of mine sometimes makes me want to laugh. Maybe it’s because I have been so lucky as to avoid serious injury.
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